


Their Song Is Almost Over

by Professor_Saber



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 02:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11004405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professor_Saber/pseuds/Professor_Saber
Summary: Twelve remembered her eventually: Clara Oswald, the woman for whom he nearly burnt the universe.  They got their happily ever after.  But even the Doctor won't live forever.  After thousands and thousands of years, the Doctor’s life comes to its natural end on Earth.  This is the story of his passing, and that of Clara Oswald, who was at his side.





	Their Song Is Almost Over

Twelve remembered her eventually.  On the most joyous day of Clara Oswald’s life, her Space Scotsman remembered her, and their reunion was long and beautiful and he ended the day by giving her the most beautiful ring she had ever seen.

They were married in England, and he made sure the ceremony was everything she had ever dreamed of.  He was hilariously awkward through the whole thing, and she loved it.

Thirteen was less awkward.  Fourteen got on her nerves so much that they separated for a few centuries.  That was the way it ended up being, sometimes; sometimes separate and going solo, but always married, always together, even when apart.

* * *

A thousand years later, when they were travelling apart, Clara was captured by the Time Lords.  The Outsiders were in rebellion, and the Time Lords needed the Doctor.  They called on the Fifteenth, and begged her to help them and restore their order.  Threatening to return Clara to the trap street was to be the Doctor’s incentive to cooperate.

Fifteen didn’t cooperate.  She came full of rage and fury and fire, and rammed her TARDIS through the walls of the Citadel to rescue her wife.  And together, the Doctor and Clara fought for the rebellion and toppled the Time Lords.  The Outsiders, the Shobogans, the _Gallifreyans_ , were free at last.

The Doctor would never call herself a Time Lord again.

* * *

Millennia passed, and it was the Sixtieth Doctor who decided to retire at last.  He and Clara were never to part again.  Eventually, they found themselves on Earth again, and the Doctor finally became the Curator.

The Curator had only one face left after he revisited his fourth.  He regenerated for the final time not long after his youngest selves had saved Gallifrey; not long after his wife’s much younger self left the Under-Gallery.  A few decades later, at most.  He chose his twelfth face, the one Clara once took to calling her “Scottish stick insect,” and she had wept when she saw it again.

He had a little over five hundred years after that.  She had told him that she would return to the trap street once he died, but he didn’t want to discuss it.  They instead reminisced about their travels together, and after UNIT decommissioned the Under-Gallery late in the twenty-second century, they traveled again.  All of time and space, from the Space Orient Express and the second-most beautiful garden planet in the universe, to more “normal” locations.  They visited the Zygon nations in Brazil and Indonesia, and every last one of the places in Clara’s beloved _101 Places to See_.

They saw their children frequently.  It had been a bit of a chore, having children; the new Gallifrey had consigned the looms to the dustbin of history as a symbol of the old, oppressive regime.  They could have sex (and certainly did), but pregnancy was not an option when time-looped, and no Earth-bound clinic could handle a half-Gallifreyan baby.

But the new Gallifrey considered the Doctor and Clara their saviors, so they rebuilt them a custom loom without a second thought.

There was Emma Jane, who had taken to her parents’ example and went on adventures around the universe as “The Detective”; Petronella, who had taken after her namesake and gone into the sciences; Irving, who had taken after his long-dead uncle and was a member of the Gallifreyan Parliament; and Charlotte, who had become ambassador to Akhaten, though he preferred to go by Charles in his current regeneration.  And Jenny, who had called Clara “mum” for so long because Clara never cared that she wasn’t hers.

Their children were now all quite old themselves, for Gallifreyans.

The Doctor and Clara even visited Gallifrey.  The first time, they received a royal welcome, but it was so overwhelming their subsequent visits were conducted entirely in secret.  Still, they teased each other about the time, six thousand years earlier, when a generation of Anglophile Gallifreyans had offered them actual crowns, and they had run away before the poor President had even finished making the offer.

But above all, they had lived.

* * *

The end came (from a linear, subjective viewpoint) in AD 2463.  Her Doctor looked so old, but still had the same energy, and was more concerned with Clara completing her own confession dial than preparing for his own end.

“I don’t want you to cry,” he said suddenly over dinner one night, a month before the end.

“Cry?” she asked.

“When,” he said, struggling with it, “when I pass.”

“Oh, Doctor,” she said, getting up and positioning herself behind him, holding him.  “I am going to cry _so hard_.”

He let out a chuckle that turned into a sharp cough.

“Don’t fuss!” he said.

“About you…passing?”

“About the cough!”

“Fine,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.  “But I _will_ cry.”

“I don’t want you to.”

She shook her head.  “Pretty sure you don’t get a vote.”

He sighed, and let it go.

* * *

A week before the end, the TARDIS began dying as well.  The symbiotic connection between her and the Doctor had been so strong for so many millennia that they knew she wouldn’t survive his death, either.  The Doctor was bedridden from that point onward.

Clara sent out the call then.  Their children all came at once, from across the universe, and Susan and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on.  The next day, other friends turned up: Ashildr, Rusty the Dalek, Shona McCullough, Donna Noble, Lord President Gastron, and even Ohila.  Clara took Gastron’s TARDIS and picked up the Brigadier, and Sarah Jane, and Kate, and Osgood, and her parents, all moments from their own deaths, laws of time be damned.  Gastron didn’t complain, and she brought more of his companions to give their final goodbyes.  She had to; she couldn’t let him die without seeing them again.

Three days later, most of them had been returned to their own times and deaths.  Ohila and Ashildr had gone as well, leaving Gastron as the only person behind who wasn’t part of the family.

At the end, the Doctor sent everyone out except Clara.

She knelt beside him, and stroked his hair, and wept.

“I told you not to cry,” he whispered.

“How could I not cry?” she asked.

“It will be okay,” he said.  “We won’t be apart for long.  The Matrix…”  And he coughed violently, and didn’t stop for a moment.

“It’s okay, my Doctor,” she said.

He sighed deeply.  “Do you remember our wedding, Clara?”

“How could I forget?”

“Well, it was about…how long ago was it?”

“Twenty-two thousand years,” she said.

“Twenty-two thousand,” he said, smiling.  “Oh, so many nights.”

“Eight million,” she said.  “I think.”

“Look at you,” he said, reaching up to touch her face.  “You’re still so beautiful.”

“So are you,” she said.

He laughed.  “I’m so _old_.”

“So am I.”

She held his hand, and they gazed into each other’s eyes for a second of eternity.

“I think I can hear them,” he said.

“Hear who?”

“My old family,” he said.  “The Matrix, you know.  My first wife, Essatoragetorix.  You’ll like her.”

“I hope she’s not jealous,” Clara said.

He thought for a moment.

“Nah,” he said, and Clara laughed at his casual tone.

“Say it to me,” he said.  “One more time.”

She didn’t need to ask.  “Doctor who?”

He laughed.  “The first question.  The first thing you ever said to me.”

“I think that was ‘Where’s the internet’, actually.”

He leaned up as best he could, and kissed her on the lips.  “Goodbye, my Impossible Girl.  My Clara.”

“Goodbye, my Doctor,” Clara said.  “I’ll see you soon.”

“Forever?” he asked.

“Forever,” she said.

He smiled, and breathed his last.

And her sobs let everyone know he was gone.

* * *

Clara was sitting between Petronella and Emma Jane while the universe eulogized the Doctor.  His timestream had already been entombed in the TARDIS, which in the last week had leaked to be a hundred feet tall.

Clara tried not to listen.  The Lord President spoke, and Ashildr, and Rusty, and dozens of dignitaries.  Clara idly noticed the Prime Minister of Gallifrey, an Acabosian who had been accepted into the University of Arcadia centuries before.  He had been Chameleon Arched some time ago, and had regenerated since she’d last seen him.

She wished it was a family affair, something small.  But she knew they wouldn’t allow it.  They stood there, calling him the Great Healer, and the Savior, and the Architect of the New Gallifrey.  The only title that was accurate in her opinion was “Last of the Time Lords,” since their revolution had ended the stifling regime of the Academy so many millennia earlier.

Near the end of the ceremony, Jenny got up to speak, her shock of red hair more than making up for her aged stoop.  Of their children, only Emma Jane looked young, as she had regenerated recently.  Clara imagined people would think she was their great-great-grandchild if they didn’t know any better.

She had loved all of his faces, but felt a little strange that _she_ never changed.  He had always told her he didn’t mind, and she’d teased him about how of _course_ he didn’t mind, since it meant he’d always have his _hot_ wife while every few centuries she had to deal with him when he was old, and as she reminisced she began to silently cry.

“It’s okay, Mum,” Petronella said, holding her hand.

“Yeah,” Clara said, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist.  “I’ll need both of you when I go up there.”

Soon, it was Clara’s turn, and she leaned on her daughters as they walked up to the podium with her.  She may have technically remained frozen at twenty-nine, but at that moment she felt every second of her twenty-three thousand years.

She swore to herself that she would not break down in front of the universe, and she didn’t.  She gave her short and heartfelt speech, received polite applause, and leaned on her daughters again as they walked back to their seats.

She didn’t cry during the remainder of the ceremony.  But she remained in her seat with her children as everyone left, and sat there until after the twin suns had set.

When the family was alone at last, she walked up to the grave.  He had discussed his epitaph with her before.  When he was still The Curator, he talked about something grandiose, or maybe something so bizarre that future generations would wonder what it meant for eons after.

She wept as she stood before the marker, engraved in both Gallifreyan and English, not even noticing the space they had left for her name.

It said, “Proud father and ancestor, and devoted husband of Clara Oswald.”

* * *

She stuck around for a while after that, not wanting to make her children to grieve for their mother so soon after losing their father.  Thirty years passed in a blink.  She ended up living in Petronella’s apartment at Eastern Gallifrey University, not having any interest in returning to Earth.  Her children told her it was okay for her to die, that she shouldn’t outlive _them_ too, but, ever stubborn, she didn’t listen until Charles visited her one day.

“Mum,” he said.  “I can hear your thoughts from a mile away.  Literally.  You want to be with Dad.  And you’re so depressed you’ve just been staring at that spot on the wall for eleven hours.  It’s time.”

Another year passed as she made her final arrangements.  She commissioned her epitaph, and made a small alteration to the Doctor’s.  She spent a month dithering about which child to leave her confession dial to before they all came by to visit, and told their mother to give it to Petronella and leave it at that.

On her final day, she returned to the Citadel for the first time since Arcadia had been made Gallifrey’s new capital, eleven thousand years before.

The goodbyes to her family were difficult and full of tears, and she worried that she was being cruel and cowardly in abandoning them in such a manner.  But her children assured her that watching her weep for her lost love for possibly centuries on end would be much worse than letting her go.

When the extraction chamber opened, she saw her Doctor’s face again.  It was the same face he had when he died, but he looked so young to her, and so hurt.  That Doctor didn’t know that they would ever meet again, and was about to endure eons of torture for the barest hope that she could be rescued.  It took every fiber of her being not to jump out there and hug him.

Saying her final goodbyes, she stepped back into the trap street.

As time started again, she _breathed_ for the first time in thousands of years, and it was such a wonderful feeling that she barely noticed as the quantum shade tore her apart.  She felt herself scream the scream that had haunted the Doctor for so long, but she felt like she was laughing.  And then her body fell away, and she found herself standing in a green field, with the Eleventh Doctor— _her_ Doctor—standing in front of her.

“Is this the Matrix?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, grinning at her.  “It’s taken you long enough to get here.”

She leapt onto him, wrapped her arms around him and kissed and kissed and kissed him.

“Oh, I’ve missed you so much, chin boy,” she said.

“I’ve missed you, too,” he said.  “Longest millennium of my life.”

“You’re dead,” she said.  “And it was thirty-one years.”

“I’ll be the judge of time,” he said.

She stroked his face.  “I can’t believe you’re really here.”

“I’ll always be here,” he said, and held out his arm to link with hers.

“Forever?” she asked.

“Forever,” he said, and arm-in-arm, they walked off into the Paradise of Gallifrey.

* * *

Tens of thousands of years later (from a linear, subjective viewpoint), a family visited the gargantuan TARDIS in the Dry Lands of Gallifrey.  They had come from the other side of the universe, ignoring the visitor’s center and the little shop to see the resting place of their ancestors.

As the daughter left a wreath of flowers behind, the family looked up at the engraved letters:

_Here rests_

_THE DOCTOR_

_Aged 24,561 in the reckoning of Earth_

_Proud father and ancestor_

_and devoted and beloved husband of Clara Oswald_

 

_As well as_

 

_CLARA OSWALD_

_Aged 23,127 in the reckoning of Earth_

_Proud mother and ancestor_

_and devoted and beloved wife of the Doctor_

 

_“Their song may be over, but the story never ends.”_


End file.
